Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2

Gigabyte H55M-USB3

As the name suggests, Gigabyte's H55M-USB3 model brings USB 3.0 functionality to the masses at an attractive price of $110.

The H55M-USB3 offers full support for i3/i5 processors and comes laden with a full spread of ports and slots. NEC's D720200F1 supplies USB 3.0 and you get a total of seven SATA ports thanks to the addition of Gigabyte's GSATA chip. Realtek's ALC 889 chip is used for audio duty and is supplied with Dolby Home Theatre software, which now works thanks to a BIOS update from Gigabyte. Package contents are once again limited to a couple of SATA cables, I/O shield and an IDE cable—nothing new to report there.

Software

Gigabyte provides an array of software, including DES (energy saving), Easy Tune 6 (overclocking), Q-Share (network folder sharing), and Smart 6 (backups, one touch overclocking, Quickboot, Password/date storage, event logging and user access schedules). A tool called "AUTO Green" is supplied which works with a Bluetooth cell phone—enabling power saving modes to be engaged on the motherboard whenever the Bluetooth cell phone is out of receiver range (you don't get a Bluetooth dongle with the board though). Out of all of the packages on offer, the two that you're most likely to use are the Easy Tune 6 and DES Energy Saver 2. Barring AUTO Green, the rest of the bundled software tools are simplified GUI's offering functions that are native to operating systems like Windows 7 in one guise or another (backups, user account control, etc).

Easy Tune 6 is Gigabyte's spin of OS overclocking software and allows on-the-fly changes to all voltage rails and bus frequency manipulation:

The only area of functionality that caught our attention with Easy Tuner 6 is in the department of DRAM reference voltage levels—we're not sure if all of the values are being reported correctly. The Address Vref voltages usually track changes to VDIMM and maintain a 50% ratio of the applied DIMM voltage, at least that's how they're set to default on other boards. Going by how well this board clocks memory, it's probable that the voltage levels do change behind the scenes but are just being misreported in the BIOS and EASY Tuner GUI.

One touch overclocking profiles are available, providing a quick and easy boost up to 160BCLK. Voltage ramping is fairly moderate and the end result is a completely stable OC.

The Board

There's not much we can say to fault Gigabyte's board layout; everything is readily accessible in most situations. Although the close proximity of the DIMM slots to the primary PEG slot can make inserting memory modules a little tricky when the PEG slot is occupied with a long graphics card. We'd have liked an extra fan header as well; Gigabyte provides two on the H55M-USB3, leaving users who are overclocking with limited cooling options. By the way, despite its appearance, the lowest PCI-E slot does not run at x16 link width; it's limited to x1 by hardware—Gigabyte's inclusion of the a full length slot in this location is purely aesthetic.

The PWM area does get rather hot under heavy CPU loads, and while the FETs are within their operating limits, keeping them cool is usually not a bad idea. If you plan on pushing high memory speeds simultaneously with high CPU frequencies, active cooling of the memory will require Molex to 3-pin fan connector. Like other boards in this price range, we don't think the PWM circuits employed for CPU VCore are comfortable overclocking HT enabled Lynnfield processors much past 3.6GHz (give or take) long-term if you intend to load the CPU heavily—it's safer to run the CPU at stock in most cases.

Overclocking

The H55M-USB3 is a capable performer when it comes to memory clocking. Using the highest available QPI multiplier ratio, speeds up to 1850MHz are fully stable with our expensive Corsair Dominator GT 4GB kit:

Higher memory speeds are indeed possible but need require use of a lower QPI multiplier ratio, otherwise S3 resume won't work if you leave the board in sleep state for 5~6 hours. 8GB memory overclocking is good too:

1600MHz fully stable speeds are possible with or without the IGP active, making the H55M-USB3 one of the most flexible H55/H57 boards we've reviewed to date.

BIOS

Gigabyte's BIOS is well laid out and offers plentiful options for overclockers. Fine step voltage control is available for every rail, plus you get the option to key voltages in directly without having to scroll through most of the scale. Everything else from QPI multiplier ratio control to IGP multiplier/frequency selection is also available.

BIOS flashing is made easy thanks to a built in utility called Q-Flash. Although the BIOS chips are not mounted on sockets, Gigabyte's dual BIOS allows the board to POST should one of the BIOSes become corrupt due to overclocking or a failed BIOS flash.

Over-zealous overclocking attempts can usually be recovered without having to resort to clearing the CMOS. The BIOS POST failsafe monitor is not fully automated in every regard though, there are instances where you'll have to power down the PSU and then power up again to get safe mode to engage—but it's still better than going through the rigmarole of clearing CMOS.